Excerpt.
After a few days spent indoors, cold dug into Conrad’s head and neck like a hawk’s talons. Wrapping the second of two cloaks more snugly around his wife, he steered his big bay, Gog, along the sunken road and wished again that Richard was not leading their party.
“Are the woods here always so dark, even at midday?” Maggie asked, without turning. They had ridden out from the early morning, but not a word of complaint had escaped her lips. He was proud of her, but too tired to praise.
So much for Richard’s short-cut! Conrad was also too saddle sore and chilled for anything more than resigned irritation. Swallowing to relieve his dry mouth, he said, “These sunken tracks fall quickly into shadow, but they are a good way of shifting through the greater forest unseen.”
“Is that necessary with a troop of our size?”
“Your father thought it wise.” Secrecy came naturally to Earl John and that peacock cousin of his, Lord Gerald, but Conrad did not have to like it.
“When did Richard come here?”
Maggie must be exhausted if she uses questions as a distraction. Yet it was a handy inquiry and one he himself had wondered at. “Years ago, with our father.” The gilded pair had made a progress of the family’s lands, son and heir together. Feeling the old bitterness rise up, Conrad said a prayer against his envy of Richard and concentrated instead on the delicious sensation of his wife’s rump pressed against his groin. “In the summer,” he added, clicking his tongue to ease Gog past a patch of black ice.
Maggie briefly clasped his arm and he knew she understood. What was an easy path in summer was not the same in winter.
“Did your brother not remember how deep the snow can lie?”
“Richard as a chevalier does not care.” He rides well and he has no pillion to consider. Or did Richard plan to travel this way because I ride with Maggie?
Even as Conrad told himself not to be stupid—his brother was neither so devious nor so malicious—a whoop rang out from the head of their column.
“Woo! Better than a bishop skating! Excellent fun!”
Conrad stood on his stirrups to see Richard waving and smirking at the bottom of the long, descending slope, now narrowed down as slim as a sword and with frosted snow funnelled high on either side. Richard spotted him and hollered again.
“The Roman road is here, brother, am I not right? I knew I was right!”
“That path will be glass smooth soon,” murmured Maggie, anticipating the same danger as her husband. Her fingers were hidden by her mittens, but Conrad knew it was no bet that her hands would be fisted into Gog’s thick mane.
“We shall dismount,” he began, through clenched teeth, before Richard brayed again.
“Come on, no cowardice! Ride it!”
There again, why should we? The snow slope had become a challenge, one Conrad was determined to win. He coaxed the big bay into an ambling canter, aware that Gog’s longer gait would mean that the stallion stepped onto pristine snows. He felt Maggie shudder but she only hissed in a breath as they began the descent.
****
Why are men such idiots? The question drummed in Maggie’s head. Caged by her husband’s iron arms, she closed her eyes, then snapped them open, aware of the bitter air slicing through her lungs. Perched on this huge barrel of a horse, guided by a brute of a warrior, she lurched helplessly in the saddle and saw the icicles, hanging from the branches, then the looming, skidding ground. Desperate not to be sick, she endured the steepling dive, the nightmare sense of uncontrolled falling, the roar of blood and racing hooves in her ears, and then it was over.
“You fool!” she almost snarled. Part of her wanted to say that, and more. Are you so careless of me? Is your rivalry with your brother more important than my safety? Must everything be a challenge?
She patted the steaming Gog, instead. She had seen, as Conrad must surely have seen, the fleeting, satisfied expression on Richard’s handsome face towards her when she seemed about to scold her husband—which would make me a nag and Conrad hen-pecked, at least in the eyes of all these men, never mind that none of them are riding pillion, so none of them have the same danger.
Just in time, she reined her anger back. Richard wants to divide us. He will not find it so easy.
“Odd ride.” Nothing would compel her to say it was good, but she ignored her queasy stomach, sore from the horse pommel, twisted about in the saddle and smiled at her man. She offered her lips to be kissed and Conrad obliged, a sweet moment which helped to stifle her fears.
